No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn...

...or Queens as it were. Alison's son was in the hospital for a few days this week, gave us all a bit of a scare when he couldn't really move his neck and stopped eating. Turns out he had a bacterial abcess in his throat and a few days in bed on an IV drip full of top quality drugs more or less cleared it up. He got out this morning and while hardly on top of the world, he's doing much better.

That made for a stressful week in a few ways. Obviously seeing a kid you care about in a hospital bed is tough in any way, but there are other layers that spring from a situation like this. Alison wound up missing three days of work this week and while her employers were gracious and understanding enough that's still always a source of stress in the back of your mind. She spent the nights at the hospital, which lead to your's truly going into bachelor mode for a while, and coming to the realization that sleeping alone when you're happily married and used to having someone there with you is... weird. I don't consider myself the co-dependent type, but this was the first time I'd ever been alone overnight in the apartment in the two plus years I've lived here and it was odd. I didn't sleep very soundly and kind of went into an odd funk because of it. Nothing serious or really all that harsh, just kind of odd, I wasn't my normal chipper self. Thankfully things are back to normal now. The late night phone calls, text messages and alarm clocks lead to some really restless nights and a rough work week (having nothing to do with my position or performance) was really taking its toll on me come Friday night where I more or less hit my grumpy peak.

Escapism is good then, right? Distractions and all that? A Swingin' Utters tribute CD comes out mid-Feb featuring new tracks the Teenage Bottlerocket, The Street Dogs (very fitting) and The Cobra Skulls. This makes me happy. As does a box that arrived from Amazon.co.uk the other day containing Blu-ray's of Suspiria (amazing sound, screwy contrast that mars an otherwise excellent presentation), Von Trier's Antichrist, and Martyrs - none of which are available domestically or in region free imprt versions making me happy with the Momitsu region free player we invested in last year. We also really enjoyed Pontypool recently, a fantastic exercise in atmosphere over style and gore by Bruce McDonald, the director best known in America for Hardcore Logo but who will always be near and dear to my heart for Highway 61, Roadkill and the short lived CBC television series, Twitch City. Those who dig their horror on the smart side and who don't require jump scares or buckets of entrails ought to enjoy this really and truly original work (go Canada go!).

Last weekend before her son took ill, Alison and I went to Chinatown to buy Shaw Brothers stuff. We grabbed Intimate Confessions of A Chinese Courtesan and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter, the later to satisfy her current but well deserved Gordon Liu obsession. I also grabbed Johnnie To's latest, Vengeance, on BD. Haven't watch it yet, but I plan on getting to it soon. Some day I'll have spare time. I keep telling myself this. Now that things are a bit calmer than they were, I think she and I are going to go out for steaks. Just as soon as she wakes up from a well earned nap.